Throwing a Halloween party sponsored by Kellogg's Rice Krispies

Some of you would sell their souls rather than miss out on a night of trick or treating. Others would like nothing more than to tell every door-stepping batch of spooky teens to stick their pumpkins where the jack-o-lantern light don't shine.

But love it or loathe, it’s a great excuse to get the kids baking, and showing them the many, many educational delights cooking has to impart, including - please don your school-curriculum hat now - maths (counting, weighing and measuring, telling the time), literacy (following the recipe, new vocabulary), science and technology (mixing, baking, blending, grating), physical education (using fine-finger control to crack eggs, honing hand-eye co-ordination with pouring and spooning) and lots of lovely knowledge and understanding of the (culinary) world.

But, of course, what it's really all about is fun. And a bit of a laugh with your kids (assuming your sense of humour doesn't get buried in the inevitably huge amounts of flour on the floor). And - gazing hopefully into the foodie future - it's also about laying love-of-cooking foundations for the blessed day when you get to put your feet up while your child makes supper

Tips for the perfect halloween partyfood

• Worms in dirt: essentially chocolate custard with gummy worms, topped with crumbled-up chocolate biscuits.
• Insect ice: add something extra to drinks by freezing plastic bugs or gummy sweets in ice cubes.
• Spooky sarnies: cut bread into ghost shapes, spread with cream cheese and use raisins for eyes.
• Witches' brew: put green food colouring in a pitcher of lemonade, or make ice cream floats by adding mint ice cream to green limeade - it'll foam up gruesomely.
• Icy hands: freeze water dyed with green food colouring, in a rubber glove; once frozen, cut glove off and use hand to chill fruit juice punch - blood orange juice is suitably red and gory.
Witches' fingers: tear hot dogs in half and make slashes near the torn end for knuckles. Cut off a slither of the other end to be the fingernail bed and add a blob of ketchup for the nail. If serving in buns, dollop ketchup at the torn end too!

Ricicles ghosts, Frosties toffee apples and Coco Pops bats are just some of the ghoulish Halloween creations from Kellogg's Big Bake. Visit www.thebigbake.co.uk for some scarily simple recipe ideas and suggestions. Then, take a snap of your family baking with Kellogg's products and email, text or post your picture to us. Kellogg's will pick the families that look as if they are having the most fun to star in a special TV ad to be shown on Mother's Day 2009 on ITV.

And, finally, solve the perennial Halloween conundrum of what to do with the leftover scooped-out bits of pumpkin by trying these yummy Mumsnet recipes: